Current Directions in Psychological
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Making Meaning out of Negative Experiences by Self-Distancing
Ethan Kross and Ozlem Ayduk
Current Directions in Psychological Science 2011 20: 187
DOI: 10.1177/0963721411408883
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Making Meaning out of Negative
Experiences by Self-Distancing
Current Directions in Psychological
Science
20(3) 187-191
ª The Author(s) 2011
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DOI: 10.1177/0963721411408883
http://cdps.sagepub.com
Ethan Kross1 and Ozlem Ayduk2
1
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and 2 University of California, Berkeley
Abstract
Both common wisdom and findings from multiple areas of research suggest that it is helpful to understand and make meaning out
of negative experiences. However, people’s attempts to do so often backfire, leading them to ruminate and feel worse. Here we
attempt to shed light on these seemingly contradictory sets of findings by examining the role that self-distancing plays in facilitating
adaptive self-reflection. We begin by briefly describing the ‘‘self-reflection paradox.’’ We then define self-distancing, present
evidence from multiple levels of analysis that illustrate how this process facilitates adaptive self-reflection, and discuss the basic
science and practical implications of this research.
Keywords
self-distancing, rumination, self-control, emotion regulation, self-regulation, meaning
Common wisdom suggests that it is helpful to introspect when
bad things happen—that people should try to understand their
feelings when they feel upset in order to improve them. This
idea is deeply entrenched in Western popular culture as any trip
down the local bookstore self-help aisle quickly attests. Is it
true?
The Self-Reflection Paradox
Although this question has been the focus of much research, the
results reveal a paradox. On the one hand, countless studies
indicate that encouraging people to reflect on why they feel
upset leads to important physical and mental health benefits
(Pennebaker, 1997; Wilson & Gilbert, 2008). The assumption
behind much of this work is that by reasoning about why one
feels a certain way, people develop explanations for their negative experiences that provide them with closure and emotional
relief. On the other hand, an equally large body of research
indicates that people’s attempts to understand their feelings
often backfire, entangling them in ruminations that make them
feel worse (Nolen-Hoeksema, Wisco, & Lyubomirsky, 2008).
Thus, the question is: Why do people’s attempts to make
sense of their negative feelings sometimes succeed and at other
times fail? We address this issue by reviewing findings from a
research program on self-distancing, which focuses on explicating the psychological mechanisms that enable people to
reflect on negative experiences adaptively, in ways that allow
them to make meaning out of them so that they cease to be
ongoing sources of distress.
What Is Self-Distancing?
Human beings possess the capacity to transcend their egocentric point of view. Consider Tom, for example—a heartbroken adolescent who is mired in despair after being dumped by
Jennifer. Motivated to understand his feelings, Tom might
recall his rejection experience and replay the event happening
all over again through his own eyes. From this perspective,
Tom might think, ‘‘Why did I feel that way during that situation?’’ Here Tom is focusing on his feelings from a selfimmersed perspective—the self that is reasoning about the
rejection and the self that is experiencing the rejection are one.
It is also possible for people to take a step back when
thinking about past experiences and reason about them from
the perspective of a distanced observer, akin to a fly on the
wall. From this perspective, Tom might think: ‘‘Why did Tom
feel the way he did during that situation?’’ Here, Tom is focusing on his feelings from a self-distanced perspective—the self
Corresponding Author:
Ozlem Ayduk, Psychology Department, Room 3210, Tolman Hall #1650,
University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, or Ethan Kross, Psychology
Department, 1012 East Hall, 530 Church Street, University of Michigan, Ann
Arbor, MI 48104
E-mail: [email protected] or [email protected]
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188
Kross, Ayduk
that is reasoning about the rejection is psychologically removed
from the self that is experiencing the rejection.
What might the implications of adopting a self-distanced
versus a self-immersed perspective be for facilitating adaptive
self-reflection? Drawing from prior research on self-control
and psychological distance (Mischel, Shoda, & Rodriguez,
1989; Trope & Liberman, 2003), we reasoned that a selfimmersed perspective would predispose people to focus narrowly on recounting the concrete details of their experience
(i.e., what happened?; what did I feel?) rather than on taking
the big picture into account in order to make meaning out of
their experience (Kross, Ayduk, & Mischel, 2005). In contrast,
we hypothesized that adopting a self-distanced perspective
would allow people to focus on the broader context in order
to reconstrue their experience in ways that would reduce
distress. Thus, we predicted that self-distancing would facilitate adaptive self-reflection whereas self-immersion would
undermine it.
stress and emotional turmoil I was going through combined
with a lack of satisfaction with things in general. All these
underlying currents and frustration led me to be irritable
and thus sparked the conflict over a silly argument . . . ’’
Self-Distanced 2: ‘‘I was able to see the argument more
clearly...I initially empathized better with myself but then
I began to understand how my friend felt. It may have been
irrational but I understand his motivation . . . ’’
As these examples illustrate, people who self-distance focus
less on recounting their experiences and more on reconstruing
them in ways that provide insight and closure. This shift in
thought content leads participants who self-distance to experience less distress, and this is true regardless of whether people
reflect over anger or sad experiences (Kross & Ayduk, 2008,
2009; Kross et al., 2005). Whether these findings generalize
to other types of emotional experiences awaits further research.
Buffering Effects
Experimental Evidence
These predictions have been tested in multiple experiments,
using a well-developed paradigm. We first ask participants to
recall an intense negative experience, usually an event
involving anger or sadness. We then cue them to analyze their
feelings from either a self-immersed (e.g., Visualize the
experience through your own eyes . . . try to understand your
feelings) or a self-distanced (e.g., Visualize the experience
from the perspective of a fly on the wall . . . try to understand
your ‘‘distant self’s’’ feelings) perspective and examine the
effect of these manipulations across multiple levels of analysis.
Short-Term Effects
We find that immediately after people analyze their feelings,
those who do so from a self-distanced perspective report less
distress than those who adopt a self-immersed perspective
(Kross & Ayduk, 2008, 2009; Kross et al., 2005). How does
self-distancing lead to these changes in emotion? We consistently find that adopting a self-distanced perspective transforms the way people make sense of their experiences. To
illustrate, consider how participants in one experiment
described their stream of thoughts as they analyzed their
feelings:
Self-Immersed 1: ‘‘I was appalled that my boyfriend told
me he couldn’t connect with me because he thought I was
going to hell. I cried and sat on the floor of my dorm hallway and tried to prove to him that my religion was the same
as his . . . ’’
Self-Immersed 2: ‘‘Adrenaline infused. Pissed off.
Betrayed. Angry. Victimized. Hurt. Shamed. Stepped-on.
Shitted on. Humiliated. Abandoned. Unappreciated.
Pushed. Boundaries trampled upon . . . ’’
Self-Distanced 1: ‘‘I thought of the days and months running up to the conflict and was reminded of the academic
Does the meaning making that self-distancing promotes have
buffering effects? Findings from short-term longitudinal
experiments suggest that it does. For example, in one study
we found that participants who analyzed their negative experience from a self-distanced perspective experienced less distress
when they thought about the same experience again up to 1
week later and ruminated less about their experience over time
compared to people who initially self-immersed (Kross &
Ayduk, 2008).
The effects of self-distancing have also been compared to
distraction. In the short-term, self-distancing and distraction
are equally effective at reducing negative affect relative to
self-immersion. Over time, however, the beneficial effects of
distraction and self-distancing diverge. Compared to people
who initially distract, those who reflect over their feelings from
a self-distanced perspective report ruminating less about their
experience over time and become less distressed when they
think about their negative experience again up to 1 week later
(Kross & Ayduk, 2008).
A real-world analogy for these findings is that when people
go to the movies to stop thinking about a problem they feel better during the film (assuming they see an entertaining movie).
However, when they are reminded of their problem after the
movie ends, distress returns. This is precisely what we see
happening when people distract. In contrast, people who selfdistance while reflecting derive both immediate and delayed
benefits.
Individual and Cultural Differences
Do some people spontaneously self-distance while analyzing
their feelings, and does doing so lead to similar consequences
as when we manipulate this process in the laboratory? Initial
findings suggest that the answer is yes to both questions
(Ayduk & Kross, 2010). In these studies, participants are asked
to reflect over a negative experience and then rate the extent to
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which they adopted a self-immersed or self-distanced
perspective as they analyzed their feelings. The more people
report spontaneously self-distancing, the less distress they
report both immediately after analyzing their feelings and
when they reflect on the same experience again approximately
7 weeks later. They also report ruminating less about their
experience over time. Consistently, people higher in spontaneous self-distancing score lower on trait rumination.
Recent evidence has also linked spontaneous selfdistancing with adaptive behavioral outcomes. For example,
in one study, the higher people scored on a daily measure of
spontaneous self-distancing administered over a 3-week
period, the less likely they were to act with hostility toward
their romantic partner when their partner was hostile toward
them during a laboratory conflict-discussion task (Ayduk &
Kross, 2010).
Research is also beginning to explore cultural differences on
this dimension. For example, Grossmann and Kross (2010)
found that Russians experience less distress than Americans
when they reflect over negative experiences. Why might this
be? Russians are more holistic in their cognitive orientation
than Americans (Grossmann & Varnum, 2011), so the
researchers predicted that Russians would spontaneously selfdistance more than Americans do when they reflect over their
negative experiences, which should lead them to experience
less distress (Grossmann & Kross, 2010). They found that this
was indeed the case.
These findings demonstrate that people and cultures vary in
their tendency to spontaneously self-distance. Furthermore,
variability on this dimension is meaningfully related to whether
people reflect adaptively over their negative feelings in daily
life.
Do people spontaneously self-distance consistently across
situations and can this process be enhanced through training?
What cognitive mechanisms underlie spontaneous selfdistancing, and how does it develop and correlate with other
traits? These questions await further research.
Impact Across Multiple Levels of Analysis
Psychologists have known for some time that when people
think about negative experiences it is not just their feelings
that hurt—their bodies respond as well. For example, when
people think about an argument, their blood pressure rises
momentarily. From a health perspective, experiencing such
temporary blood pressure increases is not particularly worrisome. What is worrisome is when people’s blood pressure
levels increase and remain elevated over time. This is precisely what happens when people ruminate (Brosschot, Gerin,
& Thayer, 2006).
Does self-distancing attenuate such prolonged cardiovascular reactivity? Recent findings suggest it does. Regardless of
whether people are cued to analyze their feelings from a selfdistanced perspective or engage in this process spontaneously
(Ayduk & Kross, 2008, 2010), they display less cardiovascular
reactivity when they analyze their feelings. They also
‘‘recover’’ more quickly after analyzing their feelings. That
is, their cardiovascular reactivity returns to baseline faster than
that of people who self-immerse (Ayduk & Kross, 2008).
Research has also begun to explore the neural substrates of
this process. For example, Kross and colleagues (Kross,
Davidson, Weber, & Ochsner, 2009) found that when participants reflected over negative experiences using a distancing
strategy that was conceptually similar to the one used in our
behavioral research, they displayed less activity in a network
of cortical midline regions (including subgenual cingulate cortex) than when they reflected concretely on their emotions from
an immersed perspective. Interestingly, depressed individuals
display increased activity in a similar set of regions at rest
(Greicius et al., 2007). These findings offer a psychological
explanation for why this might be: At rest, depressed individuals may be reflecting on their feelings from a self-immersed
perspective, which activates these regions.
Translational Implications
An important question raised by these findings concerns the
issue of translation: Do the beneficial effects of selfdistancing extend to vulnerable populations? Research has
begun to address this question in a number of ways.
In one line of recent work, we examined whether depressive
symptomatology influences the effectiveness of self-distancing
(Kross & Ayduk, 2009). We found that the people who benefited the most from self-distancing were the participants who
felt the most depressed (i.e., people who scored in the ‘‘moderate to severe’’ range on the Beck Depression Inventory). These
findings suggest that self-distancing may facilitate adaptive
self-reflection among clinically depressed individuals, highlighting the need for future research on this issue.
The implications of self-distancing for children are also
being explored. Children’s chronic tendencies to ruminate
are closely linked with factors that contribute to the development of psychopathology (Nolen-Hoeksema et al., 2008). To
the extent that self-distancing buffers children against rumination, teaching them how to engage in this strategy may
have important translational benefits. Toward this end, we
recently found that 10-year-olds can be instructed to selfdistance while analyzing their feelings and that utilizing this
strategy leads to short-term benefits similar to those
observed in adults (Kross, Duckworth, Ayduk, Tsukayama,
& Mischel, in press).
Connections between self-distancing and bipolar disorder
(BD) are now being drawn as well. Individuals with BD often
experience dangerously high levels of positive affect when they
think about positive experiences. Might self-distancing enable
such individuals to reflect over positive events without
experiencing excessive emotional and physiological reactivity?
Gruber, Harvey, and Johnson (2009) tested and found evidence
to support this hypothesis. Their findings highlight the therapeutic value that self-distancing may have for individuals with
BD. They also demonstrate that self-distancing attenuates reactivity to both positive and negative experiences—a finding that
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has an important take-home point for everyday life: Namely, if
you want to savor positive experiences (and don’t suffer from
BD), reflect on them from a self-immersed perspective.
Overall, the results from these studies suggest that the beneficial effects of self-distancing may generalize to vulnerable
populations. Additional work is needed to examine whether the
long-term benefits associated with this process in healthy individuals generalize to these and other vulnerable groups. In this
vein, it is noteworthy that certain therapies for depression
(Beck, 1970), borderline personality disorder (Linehan,
1993), and post-traumatic stress disorder (Resick et al., 2008)
utilize techniques that are conceptually similar to selfdistancing. Because these techniques are packaged with
other tools, however, the specific role they play in alleviating
distress requires explication.
Future research is also needed to examine when selfdistancing may be harmful or ineffective (c.f., Foa & Kozak,
1986). For example, in one study we found that cueing people
to self-distance and then focus on what they felt did not
alleviate distress. Beneficial effects were observed only when
participants self-distanced and analyzed their feelings (i.e.,
focusing on ‘‘why’’), suggesting that how a person focuses
on their feelings when they self-distance is important (Kross
et al., 2005). We suspect that people who self-distance and then
avoid their feelings in order to escape them will likewise not
benefit from this process.
Conclusion
Human beings are motivated to understand their feelings
(Wilson & Gilbert, 2008). Under most circumstances, this
meaning-making process works well. We experience events,
explain them, and move on. But in some situations, particularly
those that arouse intense negative emotion, this meaningmaking process short-circuits. Our goal in this paper was to
explain why this happens and present a solution for how to
overcome it. The capacity to self-distance while analyzing
negative experiences may provide one promising route.
Recommended Reading
Ayduk,, O., & Kross, E. (2010). (See References). Research documenting the relationship between spontaneous self-distancing and
various mental and physical health outcomes.
Kross, E., & Ayduk, O. (2008). (See References). Experimental work
examining the delayed effects of self-distancing in comparison to
self-immersion and distraction.
Kross, E., Ayduk, O., & Mischel, W. (2005). (See References). First
paper to examine the effect of self-distancing on thought content
and emotional reactivity.
Nolen-Hoeksema, S., Wisco, B.E., & Lyubomirsky, S. (2008). (See
References). A comprehensive review of the rumination literature.
Wilson, T.D., & Gilbert, D.T. (2008). (See References). A theory that
discusses the role of meaning-making for dampening emotional
reactions.
Acknowledgments
Both authors contributed equally to this manuscript. We thank Walter
Mischel, Geraldine Downey, Phoebe Ellsworth, Stephen Hinshaw,
John Jonides, and Oscar Ybarra for their feedback.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to
the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
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